I know, I know: take away my Gamer’s card.
Here’s the thing: I was deeply involved with challenges at my business during the initial release of SWG, so I never got to play as much of the game as I would have liked, nor dig as deeply as I would have liked into the systems thereof.
I am curious as to what challenges were encountered in terms of the HAM system. Anyone who’s seen some of my dream design rantings knows that I’ve got something fairly similar in mind: I’d really like to learn from the past here, but I can’t seem to find any reasonably deep detail on what the past was!
I know the basics of how system worked originally, and the general order of the changes that came along. My question is, what were the effects/problems that prompted those changes? Anyone? (Bueller?)
Voyages in Eternity 
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September 13, 2007 at 9:48 am
Van Hemlock
Hrmm… trying to remember…
I think the problems were largely twofold.
On the enemy side, the enemy had three pools of hitpoints, in effect. Any one of which, if emptied, would effectively kill it.
Most of the most of the many combat professions tended to mostly do damage in one of these pools much more than in the other two; Pistoleers did mostly red damage (health), riflefolk did blue (mind) and the machine-gunners did green (action). I’m sure the melee variants had a similar breakdown, pikemen, swordsmen and axefolk, but I forget which was which.
The trouble came when you tried to group and had a mix of different weapons along. I’d often be the only rifleman in a pistol group, and every time, they’d all be working that the mob’s red bar, while I was, in a bizarre way, competing *against* them, on the mob’s blue bar. Red would always win, just because there were more of them. I can’t remember if lowering it’s blue bar anyway was at all helpful, but in general, it meant my damage wasn’t really helping that much.
The other problem with it all was that the special attacks were powered from these same three bars, (the ones that the monster was trying to empty, via attacks and damage), and it was easily possible to kill yourself by excessive spamming of powers, and in many cases, you’d be more of a danger to yourself, than the monster! I’m pretty sure some of the attacks actually consumed the red pool, as well as the green and blue ones. Getting to 0 in any of the three killed you, I think. In other games this is intentional, (necromantic type ‘sacrifice’ powers), but seemed par for the course for everyone in SWG to some degree. Quite counter-intuitive.
It was different and interesting, but probably a bit *too* unusual as it turned out, confusing a lot of players, myself included. Someone correct me if I’m remembering it wrong though!
September 14, 2007 at 4:44 am
damianov
That certainly tallies with what I vaguely remembered… thank you for going into details.
For my part, hopefully moving from depletion-style mechanics to more of a vulnerability/limitation concept will address/mitigate the issues listed… meaning whole new problems to deal with, of course…
September 14, 2007 at 10:06 am
Aaron
Heath Armor Mana? I couldn’t remember what HAM meant.
I definitely preferred SWG’s limited health and limited upgrades (to weapon or armor) to the traditional model. That feature alone played a big role in encouraging roleplay…in terms of connecting the player with the character and world on a story level. It allows for PCs and NPCs to exist as equals, thereby making PCs really feel like part of the PC socieities. It allows for new players to group with veterans and not feel daunted at the beginning. And it allowed for a keen sense of danger and adventure, for which vulnerability is a necessary precondition. My first experience in SWG was to hear and look up at a fambaa (giant herbivore) which had wandered a bit into town from the surrounding swamp.
So I would keep the limited health, but I agree that the other bars and combat were not so good.
A Halo-style health system could be good for an MMO. Other FPS games have copied it because it works great. You’ve played Halo, right? The gist is that your health is very limited — enemies can take it down fairly quickly — but you have a shield that must depleted before you health is touched. The shield automatically recharges after a few seconds of not being attacked. For most MMOs, I would design combat so that fights last a little longer (health is drained slower). Halo also had health pack pick-ups. I would replace those somehow (not necessarily with pick-ups, though possibly) with a method depending on the rest of the game’s design.
The benefit of that sort of health system is that it helps to keep the game’s pace up. One of the things WoW did right was going for a quicker pace than previous MMOs. But if fights are brief, then you probably want more enemy spawns to balance that.
September 14, 2007 at 11:31 am
damianov
HAM stood for Health/Action/Mind, if I recall. I’ll have to crack open the old manual again tonight when I get home and verify.
My system, if I ever get it implemented, has certain things in common with the Halo-style mechanic you describe, although it’s a little less direct. As an injury-based system, my H/A/M-analogous status values end up functioning more like Halo’s shields than prototypical health/HP, basically.
Someday…
September 17, 2007 at 7:47 am
Jonathon Stevens
Ahhh how much I love talking about SWG in the good ‘ol days. Okie, first HAM does = Health, Action, Mind. Second, the first poster stated that he felt like he wasn’t really helping as he was hitting mind and not health like the others in his group. This is quite the oppoisite. Each NPC, just lik PC’s, had special attacks as well. They had to use THEIR HAM to use the attacks, but you never saw the depletion. So if you are nailing their mind, and you get it half down, the NPC can now do HALF as many mind-pool special actions than they could before. So while you aren’t KILLING him faster, you are in fact extending your group’s ability to kill him.
I loved SWG’s HAM bar and have a very similar style in Forbidden Dawn.
September 17, 2007 at 10:07 am
damianov
Interesting…. some follow up questions…
Was some of the negative feedback that was received, then, that prompted the changes made to the system over time, perhaps a matter of simply not making it more obvious that those alternative attack forms were stifling the opponent’s abilities?
Relatedly, did the fact that you couldn’t see their scores depleting as a result of their usage maybe feed into the perception of “working against each other” as opposed to “supporting the group effort directly?”
(Very interesting stuff… this is the kind of thing I’d love to have more time to really experiment with and dissect, to be honest…)
September 18, 2007 at 7:48 am
Jonathon Stevens
It was definately an oversight to not better inform the players of what wa happening. I didn’t actually ‘read’ or ‘get an official note’ about how HAM worked on NPCs, I just learned it from playing the bajesus out of that game and testing my theories (for some reason, when I start to wonder about something, I want to test the theory to prove myself right… to myself.. wow, I really AM a nerd!)
The problem was that SWG didn’t SHOW the pools of NPCs being depleted when they used abilities, so you really didn’t have any way of knowing it was going on unless you just figured it out or someone told you. On the other hand, some could say you should have known as it happens to YOU as a player, and when you fight OTHER players in PvP, you don’t see their HAM depleting when they are using special abilities either. So you would think then that everyone could assume that the NPCs follow the same basic rules.
Take that aside for a moment and let’s pretend that it didn’t affect the NPC’s actions. I was a master rifleman and although I typically could do more damage on half the fights i was involved with groups in, the ones where i didn’t were not in vein. I was the key to doing things such as pulling people out of prone or kneeling, forcing people to GO prone or kneeling, stun attacks, blinding attacks etc. I had many very useful special abilities that did other things to the NPC than just deplete their Mind pool, which made me an asset in every group.
September 19, 2007 at 5:56 am
damianov
One of my constant frustrations with nearly every MMO I’ve ever encountered has been a lack of available training and help resources in game. The types of things you are mentioning here are exactly the sort of thing that well-designed tutorials would/should elucidate and make obvious, and never do.
And I’m not just talking annoyig pop-ups that half the time don’t say much of anything anyway. It could be made fun and integrated into the gameplay… an NPC tag-along that kibitzes your combat style and gives annoying (but potentially useful) pointers after each encounter as you escort them past ambushes, for example.
Anyway, definitely good insights, thanks!
September 19, 2007 at 8:51 am
Jonathon Stevens
I’m usually of the mindset that if you have to TELL me how to use my own UI, then you didn’t design the UI well enough and should rework it. The only reason for having to explain the UI, in my book, is if there is just so much damn info that people COULD figure it out, but would take awhile without training.